Schedule: 2026 Updates, Production, and Launch
11 days ago
– Thu, Apr 02, 2026 at 03:50:37 PM
Hello spacefaring friends (is anyone on the Artemis reading this? No? Okay fine.)!
I come to you from the great land of Sick-ville. Apologies for not getting this update out in March as intended, I've been sick for...pretty much the entirety of March. Getting better now, but it has unfortunately consumed lots of time, and a small nation's GDP in tissue boxes. Suffice it to say - I have gotten very little accomplished in the past 4-5 weeks.
Nonetheless - we have a production plan in place now! We have four new games going to print this year through our partner factory: Chess Joker, Mystic Curling Club (Both in production now), One Deck Dungeon: Relics of the Forge (and the Vault box set), and 1001 Odysseys. They will be printing in that order, with Chess + Curling set to premiere at Gen Con, and Dungeon + Odysseys to premiere in the fall, first convention appearance at PAX Unplugged. For all of these games, crowdfunding fulfillment should be done (or 95% done with a few stragglers) before the conventions.
This means that 1001 Odysseys will be on the production line at the factory in June or possibly July. Since it's almost all paper-based components, we don't need to deal with any complicated plastic molding (which adds lead time). Our game will need to be print ready for June 1, which is fine, it's 95% print ready already, I just need to finish up the bits of work we lost due to the computer issues in January. I'd planned to take that on in March, but that plan had a few (t)issues arise.
We're going to be updating in just 2 weeks with more information, and I want to keep to a more firm update schedule this year as the game goes into production and makes its way to your homes! The plan is below.
Upcoming Update Schedule:
April 15 - The stuff I wanted to have in this update! Some models of the box layout, for one, plus some rules PDF sharing.
May 13 - Update on the work being re-done, hopefully complete!
June 3 - Files to Factory Update - this is when everything should be at the digital proofing stage, with production set to start shortly after.
July 15 - Fulfillment / BackerKit Update - Assuming everything else has gone to plan, this is when we will discuss shipping costs and other fulfillment things that've changed since the campaign.
And more to come in the late summer/fall after that, every 3-6 weeks depending on what's going on.
Progress, un-progress, and Next Steps
2 months ago
– Fri, Jan 30, 2026 at 09:40:24 AM
Hello friends, I know we're long overdue for an update, and I'm here to share where we are. There's good news, bad news, and medium news.
The good news is, we've got a path forward with the box, and it's not going to require us to redesign the Mission Control Board (MCB), or any other components aside from repositioning some art assets on the sides. We're moving this project to use our new factory partners (the ones who produced Innovation Ultimate, and the new printings of several of our other games. The other production partners we explored options with during the second half of last year did not pan out, unfortunately, and this wasted a decent chunk of time. Apologies for that.
The bad news is annoying but not catastrophic. If you've seen my other updates on socials or projects, you'll know I was the victim of a bit of malware. It was not nearly as bad as it could've been, but to be safe, I reformatted + rebuilt Windows on my local machine. One of the things that unfortunately did not survive that process was my personal work on Odysseys from September onward. To be clear - this does not affect any of the story or art or files, this is the work I was doing for final print preparations and hadn't checked back in to the Google Drive. All of the core work for the game is safely backed up in multiple places, but I will need to re-do 30~40ish hours of work that happened during the Fall and early Winter. With the Olympics coming up, it'll probably be what I do while watching too many Curling matches :)
The medium news is the schedule. I had hoped to be at print in December. Once we lock in the packaging with the factory, I'll get the final layout steps done. We should have the specs on that soon, which should be just in time for me to do after re-doing the work mentioned above.
Lunar New Year is approaching so the factory will be off for a couple weeks, and after that we expect to have samples and some 3D renders of the box and how things fit inside it to share in March.
Assuming no other issues arise, we should have the game files submitted for print shortly after that. Once the game is in production, we will start doing the address updates and such.
Thanks everyone for sticking with us over the long adventure! Stay warm out there, its a chilly time.
Production and Fulfillment
6 months ago
– Wed, Oct 08, 2025 at 08:50:31 AM
Hello, friends across Space and Time, I am here with a logistics update. First off, we've completed writing and editing! The stories are done, all eight bazillion branches of possibilities, so now we are working on tackling the next phase: Production.
Obviously, its been a long time since we started work on this project, and a lot has changed around the world in that time. This has affected some things, and we're working to get through some new obstacles.
Production
When Odysseys was initially envisioned, it was to be four 100-ish page books in a box, with maps, cards, etc. We got quotes for that, and our plans for the box were made with those specs in mind. As we've discussed a bit this year, the amount of writing grew, and we'll be delivering you all over 750 pages of content across two books and the almanac. This has unexpectedly caused some significant problems with box design in recent testing, and we're in the midst of figuring out how best to address it.
In addition (and partly as a result of the delays), we're now going to be using a different factory. We're working on getting everything in the game re-quoted with a couple factory options and also sorting out plans for a functional box given the book size increases. This will likely require some changes to the box art, but not in a way that needs a lot of design work. Just some repositioning of elements and perhaps a little more dark border than initially planned. When we have pictures of samples, we'll share them.
Obviously, this has to be solved before we can go to print, and we're trying to get everything in order as quickly as possible. We definitely do not want to ship you all a product where the box splits open.
Fulfillment
We sent out surveys in BackerKit a long time ago, and with the exception of add-ons (plushies, pins, canvas prints), nothing was charged since we were waiting for fulfillment to begin. Addresses and credit cards are likely out of date, and the most sane course of action is likely going to be to un-lock all of the surveys and have everyone re-enter information. We'll start on this process after the production issues are solved, because we only want to have addresses and CCs entered one more time!
In the meantime, don't worry about sending us address updates - we'll take care of that all at once.
I'll give an update at the start of November with information on how we'll be proceeding. It's annoying to spend time on production stuff that we thought was fine, but it's good that we discovered it before it caused issues for everyone.
Summer Update: Books Laid Out, Many Pagess
8 months ago
– Mon, Aug 11, 2025 at 12:46:39 PM
Hello friends and galactic associates! I am here to share updates on our progress, as is tradition. This update will be on the shorter side, because most of what we're working on is technical rather than flashy/exciting to show.
Quick version: The books are laid out and test-exported in PDF form! We're copyediting the Almanac/Rulebook right now, and applying the last few edits in the storybooks. Final playtesting and then Production remain.
Layouts and Page Counts
Exports from the database of all story content to InDesign are complete. Books 1 and 2 comprise over 700 pages. That is a bit more than we planned, but it turns out we had a lot of awesome stories to tell you (and that I made a modest miscalculation on header padding when I did earlier page estimates in updates past).
Copyediting on the stories is complete, and is proceeding on the rulebook and the Almanac. Things there are moving along smoothly, it's much easier to edit a list of terms than it is a non-linear story!
A handful of small artwork tasks (a couple stickers and achievements) are outstanding, plus any artwork tweaks we need to make based on production/box size.
Playtesting
We'll be doing a few live playtests with new players with the finished rulebook once it's ready - with the goal being that they will learn it from the rulebook themselves, so we can make sure things are clear and proper!
Factory and Production
With the page count increases, we're discussing with the factory how to safely and securely package things in a box for your shelves. We've got some good options, just need to nail down what's going to work best. Production will be the focus of our next update, with copyediting and file changes drawing it a close.
Thank you all again for your patience, and we hope you are having a good Summer!
A Storybook Layout
10 months ago
– Fri, Jun 20, 2025 at 09:47:47 AM
Hello crew,
First, it was cold Spring. Then, it was hot Spring, then it was warm Spring again and now it's instant Summer! As the wise Plumplim meteorologist Blosso Flooproot once said: "The only one surprised by the weather is the one paying attention to it." Wise words, indeed. Despite all the wacky weather, we've been working lots!
Writing and Editing Update
Story writing is complete! A handful of Almanac entries are still being written, and we've continued to make tweaks as needed based on things that the copy editor brings to our attention. There are only two chapters left still being copyedited, and that work will rap up in the next couple weeks. Once that's complete, we'll do copyediting on the Almanac, Rulebook, and individual cards - a process that is much simpler than copyediting prose. It's mostly looking for typos.
The many writers on the project have done wonderful work throughout the course of the project, and we're thankful to all of them. They wrote a lot, and in fact - they wrote a little more than we'd calculated during our last page estimate.
Our original estimate for this game was 4 books of smaller chapters, totaling around 400 pages (100 per book). As we've mentioned, we realized that the stories we wanted to tell needed more depth per chapter, which we estimated at 2x200. But as we've gotten into actual layout, we've realized our estimation calculations were off and it's going to be more than that. (Long story short, Chris made a math error!) Depending on some final layout decisions and the last bits of copyediting, we will be delivering you someplace between 600 and 700 pages of content.
We love every word of it, and we think you will too :)
Layout Update
Yes, that's right. We're doing layout! We've beenbringing the stories from our database into inDesign files to get them ready for printing. This will finally give us the actual page counts for each of the Storybooks. Here's a glimpse of a few chapters in Book 1:
Each chapter has its own color scheme for headers and cross-section of the map art for the page footer. This makes flipping through the books easier, because you can tell quickly if you've gone too far.
With all the story-writing in place, the other task to take care of is running all of the cards through inDesign using the DataMerge feature. This feature lets us convert the tables that include all the text for our Location Cards and Feature cards and into actual card layouts that include all of the correct graphics in the correct locations. Thankfully, this is a mostly automatic process! It just needs to be done last in case there had been any changes to location titles.
We're also wrapping up the final box design. In addition to the beautiful watercolor piece we've shared before, it also features sections from the Map illustrations on the sides, and some different options we're testing for display on store shelves.
Rulebook Update
In the background, we've been working on the Rulebook. The "Odyssey Operations Manual" is written and laid out in inDesign, and we'll be testing it shortly on some new players. Assuming that goes well, we'll do a copyediting pass on it, make any changes, and lock it in!
What's Next
With writing done, copyediting almost done, and component layout proceeding, we turn to the world of Factory. With finalized page, card, and component counts (and things like the height of the box, which depended on these things) we'll be able to lock down final quotes and get production underway.
We are continuing to monitor the tariff situations and figuring out how best to navigate - it's been a wild ride this year and we really hope stability is going to be the norm for the rest of the year.
